


Fall to Thrive

by commas_and_ampersands



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, Silver Millennium Era, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 12:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commas_and_ampersands/pseuds/commas_and_ampersands
Summary: "Illusion is the first of all pleasures." -- Oscar Wilde





	Fall to Thrive

**Author's Note:**

> Written February 2008; some revisions April 2019.

The sun felt warm on his face and the rest of the world almost silent around him.  He lounged against a tree for what felt like the first time in decades, absolutely certain that nothing needed his attention.  Everything was taken care of; he could relax, and he didn't feel guilty, tense, or restless.  He was absolutely, blissfully idle.

It was the best feeling in the world.

Kunzite grunted as a sudden weight fell upon his chest.  He opened one eye, bringing his eyebrows closer together when he saw the culprit.  All gold and smiles, she grinned at him just like Zoisite did every time he came up with a supposedly brilliant idea.  Kunzite remained about as skeptical of her as he did of his comrade.

"You will find that I do not make a very good pillow.  I'm not a very soft man."

It took exactly a third of a second for Venus's eyes to light up in wicked pleasure.  "Hard's better anyway."

"I had gathered you felt that way."

Her ankles rose off the ground, crossing in midair and exposing her legs from underneath her dress.  She swung them back and forth, feigning disinterest.  They both knew better.

"What are you doing?"

" _Nothing_ ," he said, his voice nearly rapturous.

Venus gasped.  "Do my ears deceive me or has the great and anal Lord Kunzite just admitted to languishing?"

He raised an eyebrow at her particularly phrased description, but ultimately refrained from comment.  "Have I shattered your precarious worldview?"

"Well, you have proven the existence of miracles," Venus insisted, flipping her hair over her shoulder.  "That's enough to lay a mighty oak flat."

Kunzite snorted quietly.  "There you are, bringing in phallic symbols where they aren't warranted."

There was that wickedness again, but then that's what he'd been looking for.  She leaned forward, her lips barely brushing against his ear.  "Darling, phallic symbols are always warranted."  She repositioned herself so that her hips were flush against his own.  "But I do prefer the real thing."

Before she could bite his ear, he flipped her on her back, his knee between her legs.  Her laugh was glory.

"I'd gathered that as well," he murmured, his lips finding the mole on the side of her neck.

She started to turn away.  "No, no.  I shouldn't."

He pulled her back.  "I think you definitely should."

She sighed melodramatically as it was the only way she could possibly sigh.  "But I've interrupted your lazy time, and you really don't get enough of it.  I should have just let you nap."

"As you mention at every available opportunity, we rarely have enough time for  _this_  either."

"Rest is important, you know," she pointed out, sounding very serious.  "Helps keep up your stamina, and let me tell you, there is nothing worse than lost stamina."

"I believe there is also some sort of adage about how practice makes perfect," he said, nipping at her collarbone.

"My, we are feisty today."

"Don't waste all your energy playing hard to get when we both know where this is going."

"Sometimes it's fun this way."

He was about to come back at her with some smart remark, but Venus rarely needed to be told anything twice.  She turned her head like a serpent striking, her lips seeking out his own.  There was lightning in her movement, electricity in skin, and a gentle laugh at the back of her throat.  Her arms wound around his neck, drawing them closer together, and soon, all thoughts of listless days fled his mind.

It was the best feeling in the world.

* * *

A rip, a tear, a gash split him wide.  Not rivers but oceans of blood seemed to splatter on the floor, and it was all he could do not to scream.

Beryl's yellow eyes bore into him, and she clutched a jagged dagger in a bone white hand.  "I would prefer it if you were not unconscious for this part, Kunzite.  It's far less effective."

Once, Jadeite told him that illusion was the first of all pleasures.  Infants dreamed in shape and color long before they could form a single syllable.  Children played pretend.  Adolescents drifted away from lessons and placed themselves in a better world without arithmetic or etiquette.  Even grown men retreated to secret places within their mind.

To escape.

Kunzite swallowed.  He hadn't had water in days.  He glanced down at his exposed torso, measuring the damage with as detached an eye as he could muster.  All his years of fighting and still the sight of his own abused flesh shook him somewhere down deep.  He could only take so much.

He wiped his slick brow against his left arm, straining against his bonds.  He'd been strung up so high that his feet could scarcely touch the ground.  His fingers were purple, and they had been for a long time.

"I think I can live with that."

Rather than scoff, Beryl's hand darted forward and took a chunk out of his side.  He hadn't been expecting her to retaliate so quickly, and this time, he couldn't suppress his shout.

"This isn't about living and dying," Beryl reminded him.

"Of course," Kunzite hissed, fighting to keep his breath steady.  "You're torturing me out of the goodness of your heart."

"What is good and what is right do not always align," Beryl said.  "I believe you've said as much in times of war."

Kunzite glared.  "I see no infantry.  I see no battlements.  I see nothing resembling a war in here.  Just a witch in the dark."

She lashed out, and his right cheek, one of the few spots that had been lacking a wound, now bled just as freely as so many other places.  "A general lectures me on the art of war, and he is ignorant.  You disappoint me, Kunzite."

"So sorry."

"I could make this so much easier for you."

"I prefer the hard way," he said, teeth still clenched hard enough to crack.

Her eyes narrowed, a sharp look surrounded by sallow skin and fire.  She was as terrible as she was beautiful, grotesquely so.  All horror and beauty and terrible danger.  The most venomous snakes had the most attractive scales, after all.

"Oh, I can make this very difficult, Kunzite," she assured him.  "I can make this harder than anything you've ever endured, and you will beg for death before the end."

He met her threat with stoic silence.  He would say no more to her, he decided.  He refused to think that she might be right about begging.

Beryl sighed, and suddenly, her voice sounded very different.  "As you wish."

He choked at the sound: a voice like a mermaid's laughter and silver bells tumbled from her blanched throat, and he knew.  He should look away now.  He shouldn't watch this.  But horror held his gaze as the witch-queen vanished.  A jaundiced glow wrapped around her body, shrank her frame, smoothed and lightened her hair.  Changed her.

Then Venus stood before him, red lips spun into a poison smile.

"Do you really want your lover holding the knife?" Beryl asked, wearing the wrong skin.

He finally forced himself to turn away, shutting his eyes.  If Beryl wanted him to look, she would have to pin his eyes open.

As if reading his mind, she said, "It doesn't work like that, lover.  If you won't keep your eyes open, then I'll just cut off the lids."

She drove the knife deep into his stomach.  The serrated blade scraped against his ribs, ripping through flesh and muscle, going deep.  She twisted it slowly, humming in contentment, one Venus had sung to him before.  Beryl shouldn't have known it, but she did.  "You can take quite a lot, can't you?"

He bit his tongue as hard as he could.

"It's why I need you, of course," she continued.  "You're not ordinary men.  You're not immortal, but you're not strictly human.  And if I'm going to win my war, if I'm going to pull the moon queen down, I need your strength, Kunzite."  She leaned her weight against the wound as she worked him open.  Her voice dropped into a purr, low and soothing.  "Look at me."

Gods help him, he did.

Her eyes looked wrong, light blue rayed with gold, but they didn't shine as they ought to.  "You will watch your dearest whore bring you to the brink of death.  I will call you back from that edge, and I will do it again and again until you break.  You must fall to thrive, Kunzite."  Her smile glittered like a sword-blade, shining and terrible.  "I will do this until you hate her, and then send you after her, howling for her blood.  You will tear her apart for me."

"I won't," he swore, breath wheezing and rattling in his lungs.

"You will."

"You don't understand."

Once, Jadeite told him that illusion was the first of all pleasures.  He thought of the grove, a wicked laugh, his lips against her pulse, and those blue-and-gold eyes in the sunshine.  The place that wasn't, and the day they'd never had.

It wouldn't be enough.

But it wouldn't matter either.

He smiled.  A drop of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth.  "She'll kill me before I ever get the chance."

Beryl-as-Venus drove her hand into his chest, nails slitting open his skin like a letter opener.  She curled her fingers around his still beating, struggling heart.  _Squeezed_.

"We shall see."


End file.
